What is A2P 10DLC, and why does it gate everything?
A2P 10DLC is the US carrier framework for business texting over standard 10-digit long codes. You register your brand, then each messaging campaign, and carriers assign a trust score that sets your sending speed. The difference is stark: a top-scored brand gets 225 messages per second across AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon combined, while a low-volume registration gets 3. T-Mobile also caps daily volume by score, from 200,000 messages a day down to 2,000. Nadia Osman runs every SMSLeads registration and throughput plan; her file for each client covers brand vetting, campaign use-case wording, and the score path to the tier the send calendar needs.
| Trust score | Throughput (MPS, big-3 combined) | T-Mobile daily cap |
|---|---|---|
| 85–100 | 225 | 200,000 |
| 65–84 | 120 | 40,000 |
| 25–64 | 12 | 10,000 |
| Low-volume | 3 | 2,000 |
Short codes ($500 a month random, $1,000 vanity) and verified toll-free numbers (free verification, 3 to 5 business days) are the alternatives when 10DLC throughput or branding does not fit. We spec the right number type before registering anything.
The consent rules as they stand in 2026
Three moving parts matter right now. First, express written consent under 47 CFR 64.1200 remains the standard; the FCC's stricter one-to-one consent rule was vacated by the Eleventh Circuit in January 2025. Second, the revocation rule effective April 2025 requires honoring opt-outs made by any reasonable method within 10 business days. Third, quiet hours: no marketing texts before 8am or after 9pm recipient-local time federally, with Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington at 8pm cutoffs and Texas at 9am to 9pm plus a Sunday-noon rule. CTIA's SHAFT-C policy separately bans sex, hate, alcohol, firearms, tobacco, and cannabis content on A2P routes regardless of state law. Apple adds its own layer: iOS 26 screens messages from unknown senders, one more reason registered, recognized traffic wins.
How compliance work pays for itself
Clean consent and full registration are also performance levers: filtered traffic costs you the send fees plus the revenue the message would have earned, and Postscript puts overall median earnings at $0.98 per message. Registration typically completes inside our 6-week Launch Sprint, and every campaign engagement inherits the quiet-hours matrix and suppression rules automatically. If you only buy one thing from us, our audit checks this layer first.
Compliance FAQ
On Twilio-class platforms, a standard brand registration runs about $44 to $48 one-time ($4.50 for low-volume sole proprietors), campaign vetting is $15 one-time, and a standard campaign costs $10 a month ($1.50 for low-volume mixed use). Carriers then charge per-segment fees on top: $0.0035 on AT&T and $0.0045 on T-Mobile and Verizon as of early 2026.
The TCPA gives consumers a private right of action worth $500 per text, up to $1,500 for willful violations, with no aggregate cap. Class filings rose roughly 95% year over year through mid-2025 after the Supreme Court's McLaughlin decision, and quiet-hours suits surged with them. A 10,000-message campaign sent without valid consent is, on paper, a $5 million to $15 million exposure.
Usually carrier filtering, which shows up as Twilio error 30007 or a quiet drop in delivery rate. Common triggers: traffic without provable opt-in, SHAFT-C content, public URL shorteners, identical mass blasts, and fast volume ramps. We diagnose by isolating segments and message variants, then fix the underlying registration or content issue rather than rotating numbers, which carriers treat as evasion.
The FCC's revocation rule, effective April 11, 2025, requires honoring a revocation made by any reasonable method within 10 business days, and STOP, QUIT, END, REVOKE, OPTOUT, CANCEL, and UNSUBSCRIBE all count. In practice we configure platforms to suppress instantly. The broader revoke-all scope has been delayed to late January 2027, but building for it now costs nothing.